This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2017. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor for 2017 was musician Roddy Woomble. Read the other poems in the anthology by clicking on 'Explore further'.

Image: Scream by Modes Rodríguez, under a Creative Commons licence, courtesy of the Scottish National Gallery

Rachel McCrum says the poem was inspired by 'a summer spent working in Quebec, screaming frustration at my limitations in French, I wondered why I'd moved to a city where I could not properly express myself in speech, having spent so long trying to work out what a voice was for – continuing explorations of women's voices, voiceless women, women as object, women as body, women to rise.'

Rachel McCrum is a poet, performer, and promoter. She was one half of Rally & Broad, organisers of cult Edinburgh-based poetry cabaret. In 2015, she was the inaugural BBC Scotland Poet-In-Residence. She currently lives in Montreal, Quebec, where she is the director of bilingual poetry-text-performance series, Les Cabarets Batards. Her debut collection, The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate, is published by Stewed Rhubarb.

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